Propaganda of the Museums:
A visit to any museum of natural history is a trip through a propaganda mill. Everything is tremendously biased. It is a museum dedicated to the religion of Evolution. The unsuspecting visitor views the exhibits and believes these bones are of proven age and is persuaded that these hideous ape-men were found exactly as exhibited. The visitor is unaware that the fossils are dressed up to create the illusion that scientists knew exactly how these creatures looked when they were alive. The above falsified images are still displayed today in the American Museum of Natural History!
in the Book of Job, “Speak to the earth and it shall teach you” and it is a remarkable coincidence that the first earth to speak on this subject is the sandy earth of Snake Creek in western Nebraska. For several years after the discovery of Hesperopithecus in 1922, Osborn missed no opportunity to use this fossil to heap public abuse on Bryan. On the eve of the Scopes trial in 1925, Osburn published a book devoted primarily to ridiculing Bryan, and chose a biting parody of Job as his title: The Earth Speaks to Bryan. In addition to using Hesperopithecus to attack Bryan, Osborn publicized the prize fossil in his American Museum of Natural History, commissioning “a graphic reconstruction of a Hesperopithecus couple in a forest surrounded by other members of the Snake Creek fauna, prepared by the well-known scientific artist Amadee Forestier.” This reconstruction was a marvelous example of the lifelike threedimensional exhibits for which this museum is justly famous. Looking at a photograph of the well-known Hesperopithecus exhibit, one cannot help but be amazed by the many details of the physical appearance and cultural behavior of this prehistoric man and woman that Osborn and “the well-known scientific artist” claimed to have deduced from one single tooth! Five years later, Osborn’s world collapsed. Additional fossil evidence discovered in the Snake Creek beds in Nebraska showed conclusively that the Hesperopithecus fossil was, in fact, the tooth of a pig! Osborn’s long-standing claim that Hesperopithecus was an anthropoid was officially retracted in the December 16, 1927 issue of Science. As a sorry comment on Osborn’s integrity, it should be noted that his name does not appear in the retraction article. He left to a colleague the embarrassing task of admitting publicly that their famous Hesperopithecus “prehistoric man” was really nothing but a pig. As Gould explains: “Osborn simply shut up and never mentioned Hesperopithecus again in his numerous succeeding articles on human ancestry.” Once again, we must ask, how could such a farce have happened? Why were America’s leading hominid paleontologists so ready to accept the absurd idea that a single tooth – so worn that it could not even be properly identified as belonging to a pig – was sufficient to
establish a new class of prehistoric men? Among the results of this scientific fiasco was the fact that during five years, a million visitors to the American Museum of National History in New York were enthralled by the brilliantly executed reconstruction of the Hesperopithecus prehistoric man and woman living in the Nebraskan forest. Few of these visitors would ever read the scientific literature which revealed the truth about “the man who was really a pig.”
CONCLUSIONS
In our account of 20th-century hominid paleontology, we have encountered several fraudulent “discoveries” of hominid fossils – the gentle man who was described as a savage brute (Neanderthal Man), the modern orangutan who was mistaken for our prehistoric ancestor (Piltdown Man), and the pig who was misrepresented as a man (Hesperopithecus). All three almost unbelievable mistakes were made by the most prominent names in hominid paleontology: in France (Marcellin Boule), in England (Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, Sir Arthur Keith), and in the United States (Henry Fairfield Osborn). Moreover, two of these gross misrepresentations were universally accepted by the scientific community for nearly half a century! The misinterpretations of fossils carry an important message for the believing person pertaining to the general question of contradictions between Torah and science. One must not lose sight of the fact that scientific research is carried out by human beings, who are subject to the same shortcomings of prejudice, professional jealousy and national pride that afflict us all. The history of science shows that subjective behavior has plagued some of the most famous scientists throughout their careers. Therefore, current perceived “contradictions” between Torah and science may well melt away as new scientific understanding emerges. In fact, this has already happened in many scientific disciplines, including geology, cosmology and molecular biology, where the discoveries of the last few decades have led to a rapidly growing convergence between Torah and science. Adapted from ‘The Jewish World of Wonders’.
One must not lose sight of the fact that scientific research is carried out by human beings, who are subject to the same shortcomings of prejudice, professional jealousy and national pride that afflict us all.
HESVAN 5774 OCTOBER 2013
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